


Klaus's Wish

by firecat



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 20th Century, Diego Hargreeves (mentioned) - Freeform, Difficult Decisions, Djinni & Genies, Drug Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, Episode: s01e06 The Day That Wasn't, Gay Rights, M/M, Obsession, Wishes, bondage (mentioned), dubcon (implied)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25525555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/pseuds/firecat
Summary: Klaus summons a genie from a teakettle. However is he going to decide what to wish for?
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020





	Klaus's Wish

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during Season 1, Episode 6, "The Day That Wasn't".
> 
> The character death and the dubcon mention in this story are canonical. No other warnings apply.
> 
> FFFC 100th Special Challenge  
> Table D: Fairytale/Fantasy/SciFi  
> Written for the prompt: (29) three wishes

_After Diego forcibly binds him to the chair and leaves him, Klaus slips into an altered state. Not quite dreaming, not quite awake. Not quite high, not quite clean. Not in withdrawal, but he can feel it beginning to creep toward him like a devouring monster._

~~~

Klaus is polishing the teakettle. Because being clean and sober feels weird, and obsessiveness is a way of dissociating from weird. He hears a voice. That’s nothing new. He hears voices all the time. Either the voices of the dead, or hallucinations from the drugs he takes in order not to hear the voices of the dead. No, it’s what this voice _says_ that causes “weird” to intrude into his nice, calming, obsessive polishing.

(In another time and place, it might be something different he was polishing. Someone’s boots, maybe. He might be using his tongue, rather than a cloth in his hand. But never mind that now, Klaus. Just get on with the polishing.)

“You’ve released me from the teakettle,” says the voice to Klaus Hargreeves. “I am to grant you three wishes.”

“Whaa?” 

“Look at the teakettle, you idiot.”

Klaus squints. There’s a distorted face in the side of the teakettle. It looks not dissimilar to his own. But there’s something off about the eyes. Klaus knows his own eyes. They look hungry, hurt, or lost. The teakettle eyes have none of those emotions. They’re not hungry because to entertain hunger means to wish to live. They’re not hurt because they’ve experienced every hurt already. They’re not lost because no place is home to them.

“What are _you,_ darling?” demands Klaus, putting on his armor — a playfulness he doesn’t feel. “Most dead people show up to me in physical forms, not in the overshiny sides of teakettles.”

“I’m not a dead person, cretin. What am I, you ask? What the hell sort of thing says what I just said?”

“A submissive sex worker? A drill sergeant, just before he calls you a maggot and kicks your ass into next Thursday?”

“Don’t be difficult,” says the genie. “Let’s get on with it. What do you want?”

“I want — wait. You said I have three wishes. What’s the catch? There’s usually a catch.”

“You can’t wish for more wishes, either directly or indirectly. Otherwise, three wishes. No catch.”

“Anything?”

“No one has come up with something I can’t grant yet, and I’ve been around a hell of a long time.”

“So if I wished for—“

“Stop,” says the genie. “I lied a little about there being no catch. You can’t ask me questions about what would happen if you wish for something. I don’t know. Other than that I can grant it. I don’t know how it’s going to come about.”

“That’s a pretty big catch, genie. Asking for world peace, not knowing if you’d grant it by killing off all the humans?”

“I said I was sorry, didn’t I?”

“No, actually...”

“Well, now you know. Get on with it. I don’t have all day. Actually, I have all the time in the universe, but I’m bored, so get on with it anyway.”

Klaus is fundamentally indecisive. Being off drugs and intent not to get back on them makes matters worse. (At least when he’s on them, decisions tend to come with defaults: he does what’s most likely to score him more drugs.) Having suddenly been thrust back into what he considers his present, after spending nine months in Vietnam in 1968, doesn’t help him be more decisive either. He doesn’t know who he is anymore, and it’s not like he had a good grasp on that to begin with. Having lost Dave, his one true love, killed on the front line back then? (For Klaus, that was only a few days ago.) That’s the biggest blow to his decisiveness of them all. Without Dave, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know who he is, because he isn’t anyone. And won’t ever be anyone ever again.

But...Dave. Could he...? 

What if he wished for Dave not to have been killed in Vietnam? For Dave to have lived until the present day?

Klaus thinks about the veterans he knows. Bitter and broken to a man. Would he wish that life on Dave?

What if he wished for Dave and he to be together again?

But when? In 1968? Klaus had lived through too many of the years between then and now. He didn’t want to go through them again. Never mind the years between 1968 and his birth. 1968 was before _Stonewall,_ for Pete’s sake, and it took a long time for things to get better after that.

Now? That would thrust Dave into a strange new world. After being in Vietnam? Klaus is barely surviving the transition himself, and he _comes from_ now. 

Dave and he, together, as entirely different people? But he doesn’t want Dave to be a different person. Dave and he, together, in an alternate universe? Dave, having lived a happy life? That would only be possible if Dave had never been drafted in the first place...

…which would also mean he would never have met Klaus.

Dave, having lived a happy life. A happy, _long_ life.

Without Klaus.

For all that he grew up in a household that worshipped masculine values of toughness and efficiency, Klaus has never been afraid of tears. And he weeps openly now. And asks the genie for his wish. 

~~~

_Klaus comes to. He’s still tied up in the chair, on his side on the floor. His face is wet with tears. His body feels most of the way toward sober._

_Dave — dead Dave — is there for an instant. Smiling that beautiful smile at him._

_Everything goes fuzzy and...backward. Is this the genie’s doing?_

_Wait, what genie?_


End file.
